The rise and fall of the sheep era in South Texas

Flocks of sheep grazed the range from Corpus Christi to Laredo, making South Texas one of the top wool-producing regions in the country. Carts loaded with wool, from as far away as Mexico, rolled into Corpus Christi, one of the world’s great wool markets.

The great sheep era began in the early 1850s when W.W. Chapman, an Army officer, was transferred to Corpus Christi to head the Army’s Eighth Military District depot. Chapman realized that the rich grasslands of South Texas made it ideal sheep country. He set up a sheep camp on Santa Gertrudis Creek and brought in purebred Merino rams from western Pennsylvania.

The Merino was unmatched for the quality of its wool but it was considered too delicate for this climate. The native sheep that originally came from Mexico could take the heat and thrive in the harsh climate, but it produced a wiry, coarse wool. Chapman figured that Merino bucks bred with native ewes would produce a hardy breed with a fine fleece. The result was the Merino cross-breed, which became the standard in South Texas.

James Bryden was among immigrants attracted to Corpus Christi by Henry Kinney’s land promotion efforts. Chapman hired Bryden in 1852 to handle his sheep. In payment for watching the flock Bryden was given part of the natural increase and a share in the wool profits. Bryden grazed the sheep along Santa Gertrudis Creek.

The following year Richard King bought 15,000 acres of the Santa Gertrudis grant to begin his ranch. King bought 50 merino bucks from Ebenezer McClane, of Chartiers Township, Washington County, Pa., below Pittsburgh. Ebenezer sent his son John with the sheep down the Ohio River to the Mississippi. The sheep were lost in a riverboat fire near New Madrid, Mo. McClane got another 75 bucks and delivered them to King Ranch. He stayed in Texas and soon had his own flock on the San Fernando Creek. He later was elected sheriff.

Other sheep men were among immigrants attracted to Texas by Henry Kinney’s land-selling promotions. They included Joseph Almond, George Reynolds, William and Robert Adams, T.C. Wright, and John Wade. They became sheep ranchers in the Nueces Valley.

When the U. S. Army moved its depot headquarters to San Antonio in 1856, many of Corpus Christi’s English immigrants had to find new jobs and they turned to raising sheep, something they knew from England and Scotland. That period in the 1850s marked the beginning of the sheep era. By the end of the 1850s, quality wool was shipped from Corpus Christi to world markets. When the Civil War began in 1861, the Confederacy bought South Texas wool to make uniforms for Confederate soldiers.

Word spread that South Texas was sheep country. Oscar Edgerly came to Corpus Christi from New York to tend sheep for William Headen, a wealthy wool merchant who owned his own sheep flocks. Edgerly recorded the daily routines of the sheepherder, or pastor, in his diary. When the sheep ate all the grass near a watering place, he would drive them out in search of lusher grass and bring them back for water. It was said that sheep, unlike cattle, had to be “lived with.”

It was a lonely life. Robert Adams went to work when he was 16 in 1863 tending sheep near Casa Blanca. He wrote that he did not see the inside of a house for two years and didn’t see people sometimes for two or three months.

There were 1.2 million sheep in Nueces County in the early 1870s, according to tax rolls. In shearing season in the spring and fall, lumbering ox-carts loaded with wool rolled down the streets of Corpus Christi. The wool clips were sold to the town’s wool merchants. A newspaper in Austin reported on May 24, 1877 — “Corpus Christi is controlling a large wool trade. It is thought that four to five million pounds will be handled this year.”

In the sheep era of the 1870s, Richard King owned 40,000 sheep, F.W. Shaeffer 30,000, George Reynolds owned 25,000 while Robert and William Adams had 15,000, Joseph Almond 14,000, and John Wade 4,000. Much of the region’s wealth came from sheep. In 1878, with wool selling for 30 cents a pound, Almond made $277,000 in today’s dollars on the wool from his spring clip.

Chaparral in the sheep era was usually crowded with ox-carts at the wool-buying emporiums of David Hirsch, Ed Buckley, Perry Doddridge, William Headen, John Woessner, and others. In 1873, Norwick Gussett purchased three million pounds of wool at his store on Chaparral, which was identified by a rooster weathervane and called “la tienda del gallo.” Some of the major dealers, like Gussett, owned their own ships to carry cargoes of wool to Boston and New York.

Critical occurrences at roughly the same time brought the lucrative sheep era to an end. One was a parasite that decimated the flocks of South Texas. Two was the end of the open range. Sheep operators depended on free grass and when cattle ranchers began to fence their pastures the days of the sheep men were numbered. Three was the 1884 presidential election of Grover Cleveland, who campaigned on a platform to lift the tariff on Australian wool. Wool sold for 26 cents a pound the day before he took office and dropped to seven cents a pound the day after. The domestic wool market collapsed. Other factors included over-grazing and the spread of mesquite and brush over the once-lush grasslands.

The convergence of these factors brought the great sheep era of South Texas to a close. Nueces Valley was no longer sheep country and Corpus Christi was no longer a top wool market. The sheep men sold the last of their flocks and turned to cattle.

In an ironic postscript, in World War II, Corpus Christi warehouses at the port stored millions of pounds of Australian wool for the duration of the war. Perhaps there was an old sheep man still alive who remembered the time when Grover Cleveland and cheap Australian wool did much to bring the sheep and wool era to an end in South Texas.

Murphy Givens in 2014. He started writing a weekly column on the history of Corpus Christi and ...more

Murphy Givens in 2014. He started writing a weekly column on the history of Corpus Christi and South Texas in 1998. He retired from the newspaper in 2009 but continued to write the column.